Tag Archives: Passports With Purpose

Passports with Purpose: Cambodia School Opening Ceremony

This is a photo from the Opening Ceremony of the Passports School, in Preah Vihear Cambodia. Funds to build this school were raised through Passports with Purpose in 2009.

Standing in front of 100+ kids, most of whom came from homes with no running water, many of whom are lucky to have survived early childhood, and realizing that by building this school, my friends and I had just given each and every one of them a huge push forward towards a better future was something I didn’t expect but which I will never forget.

I’ve come home to Seattle even more passionate about the education of women and children in the developing world but optimistic that this is a problem where I, and you, can make a positive impact. There are great organizations already there, working with communities building schools and libraries and teaching. Fundraising for these organizations is the single best thing we can do to help them continue their great work.

This year the Passports with Purpose goal is to raise $80,000 to build two libraries in Zambia in partnership with RoomToRead. Here’s why:
– 86% of Zambians live on less than $2 a day.
– 34% of children do not attend primary school.
– 76% of children do not attend secondary school.

The (virtual) Passports with Purpose team works to choose projects that are community-supported. These libraries will be built next to existing primary school buildings with the communities donating 35% of the cost of building in volunteer hours and donated materials. This involvement is a better guarantee of community ownership and government of the facilities after the construction project has completed.
RoomToRead includes teacher training in the project scope – and books, lots of age-appropriate books.

At Passports with Purpose we like to encourage donations by offering prizes. We have prizes. Lots of prizes. If you want to win a tour in Thailand, a week in Maui, an Xbox Kinect (with games and an Xbox Live subscription), and overnight stays a bunch of fancy hotels in cities all over the US, check out the prizes. For each $10 you donate, you get an entry into the free prize drawing of your choice.

This post was a little longer than I intended for a photo post, but so it goes. Head on over to DeliciousBaby for more travel-themed Friday photo fun.

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For $10 You Could Win A Luxury Hotel Stay

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This week I’m focusing on my favorite prizes in Passports with Purpose 2010. To enter, go to the Donate page, and for each $10 you donate, you get an entry into a free prize drawing for a prize of your choice. All the money raised (less Paypal’s fees) goes directly to LAFTI. Your donations will help build a village in India.

Since Passports with Purpose is the travelbloggers’ fund-raiser, we are supported by many travel companies including hotels and resorts. Today I’ve chosen my favorites from the long list of hotels supporting this year’s effort.

Naturally, I had to choose the four-night stay at five-star hotels in Ireland as my first choice within the vacations prizes. This is the part of Ireland where we spend most of our time when we visit family in Ireland. We got married in this area and we think it’s beautiful – and a really great destination for a family vacation.
Read more about this donation at IrishFireside.com.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win this luxury vacation in Ireland. Donate HERE.

Thinking more of a quiet couple getaway, the 3 night luxury ‘BodyHoliday’ spa break for two people at LeSPORT hotel in St Lucia is very tempting. Here’s what TrainsOnTheBrain.com had to say about this prize: “It’s an all inclusive package including luxury room, meals, all drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic), a full programme of fitness activities, plus one spa treatment per person, per day. The hotel is on the Northwest tip of the Caribbean island of St Lucia and sits directly on Cariblue’s crescent beach, surrounded by 42 acres of lush tropical gardens. It’s a thirty minute drive from the capital Castries and the George F.L. Charles airport”.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win this luxury vacation in St.Lucia. Donate HERE.

My last pick for today is a (drum-roll…) 5-night stay at any of the nine Paradise by Marriott resorts in the Caribbean and Mexico. How cool is that? As a family, we’ve stayed at various Marriott properties around the U.S. Marriott is a family-friendly brand with lots of different accommodation options but the Paradise properties truly look heaven-sent for families seeking to rest, relax and spend quality time together.
Full details of this awesome prize are at BestFamilyTravelAdvice.com.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win this luxury vacation with Paradise By Marriott. Donate HERE.

Passports with Purpose is indebted to our great sponsors, particularly:

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For $10 You Could Win A Gift Certificate Worth Hundreds Of Dollars

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Today I’ve picked out my favorite unusual experiences from the Passports with Purpose prize list. Most of these are donated as gift certificates.

Consider a flight on a zeppelin. Yep, that’s right, I said a zeppelin. Talk about way-out-there-unusual. I know my boys would love to win this one. If you’ve got a boy, or boy-at-heart in your life who’s got an engineering bent, I’d bet he’d be totally wow-ed with that as a holiday gift.
Read more about this donation at RoamingTales.com.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a flight on a zeppelin with Airship Ventures. Donate HERE.

Sometimes the tipping point in choosing a new travel destination is finding a great company to help you plan and book your trip and guide you in your once-in-a-lifetime experience. Indus Travels is devoted to bringing the best in both quality and value to custom tours to India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Dubai. The company concentrates on designing tours that introduce travelers to the amazing complexity of culture and environment, and they strive to offer these tours at unbeatable prices and with unparalleled comfort.
The full details of Indus Travels’ generous donation of a $500 gift certificate are at BreatheDreamGo.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a $500 gift certificate for an Indus Travels tour. Donate HERE.

My last pick for today is a whopping $800 gift certificate with HomeAway.com. I’m a huge fan of HomeAway. For most of our travels as a family of four in the past ten years we’ve opted to rent houses and apartments rather than stay in hotels and HomeAway.com is my preferred website to go to research and find the “right” property. An $800 gift certificate will cover a one-week stay in a 2-bed apartment in most of the destinations listed on the HomeAway.com website.
The HomeAway gift certificate in the Passports with Purpose prize list was donated by HomeAway.co.uk with GranTourismoTravels.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win this gift certificate with HomeAway. Donate HERE.

Passports with Purpose is indebted to our great sponsors, particularly:

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For $10 You Could Win A Favorite Tech Toy

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I’m a geek. I love gadgets and technology, so it should be no surprise that my prize picks today are all gadgets.

This is the Microsoft Kinect, one of the hottest-selling tech toys this holiday season. I’m familiar with the Kinect, in fact, intimately familiar: my husband worked on the Kinect team so I’ve been hearing about this device for over two years now. We had various beta versions of the device in our house for much of the early part of this year – which meant that my kids got to play with a cool new piece of technology but they couldn’t tell their friends about it! I’m not a video-gamer but I loved the way that the Kinect is a family entertainment device. I particularly like that it gets everyone up off the sofa for active game-playing.
Read more about this donation at CAroundTheWorld’s blog.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a Kinect. Donate HERE.

I’m a Kindle fan. I know, I’m biased, after all, I did work for Amazon.com for eight years. I can still spend hours in bookstores and am just ask likely to buy a new book in paperback or hardcover as I am to buy one on my Kindle. But. The Kindle rocks as a travel tool. Especially the Worldwide 3G version. In the past three months, as we’ve traveling along the spine of the Andes in South America, we’ve been in some pretty remote places. And you know what? If there’s wifi, you can buy a new book on your Kindle and it’s there in minutes. Boredom on 25+ hour bus-rides can be a thing of the past!
There are two Kindles in this year’s Passports with Purpose prize list. One each from BudgetTravelersSandbox and one from TheWorldIsCalling.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a Kindle. Donate HERE.

My last pick for today is an iPad. I don’t own an iPad but I did have the chance to play with one before we left Seattle. It’s an extremely slick device. Since we’ve been traveling I’ve been jealous of my husband’s ability to stay in touch with friends and family using his iPhone – using just wifi connectivity (we’re not paying for international data service – that’s way too expensive). But, the iPhone is small and I find it hard to read a newspaper article. I can’t imagine trying to read a book on it. The iPad is a great combination device for travelers. If I could enter a Passports with Purpose drawing, I think this is the one I’d be betting all my money on.
The iPad in the Passports with Purpose prize list was donated by DSRB.

For a $10 donation to LAFTI you can enter a free drawing to win a Kindle. Donate HERE.

Passports with Purpose is indebted to our great sponsors, particularly:

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Eat Chocolate And Support Passports With Purpose 2010

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Yours truly, outside the Fenoglio chocolate shop in Bariloche, Argentina.

Passports with Purpose 2010 started earlier this week and my friend Lauren, who owns Chocolopolis, a specialty chocolate shop in Seattle, has kindly donated a chocolate-tasting event as a prize. There’s more to chocolate than a plain bar of Hershey’s or Cadbury’s would lead you to believe and with a $10 donation (on the Passports with Purpose Donate page), you can be in the running to host this fun event for yourself and a few good friends.

This year, Passports with Purpose is fund-raising for LAFTI, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Dalit (untouchable) population in India. With $50,000 we will be able to build a village and provide some of these people with homes. You can learn more about LAFTI and their incredible mission in this short video.

Head on over to DeloiciousBaby for more travel-themed Friday photo fun.

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Chocolopolis Supports Passports with Purpose 2010

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It’s time for Passports with Purpose 2010 and today I have the pleasure of participating in the kick-off of this year’s fund-raising activities and introducing you to my friend Lauren, owner of Chocolopolis.com and two speciality Chocolate shops in the Seattle area.

First, let’s do a little review of Passports with Purpose. This will be the third year that I’ve worked on this online fund-raiser with my friends Debbie, Pam and Beth (from DeliciousBaby, NerdsEyeView and WanderlustAndLipstick respectively). This year we welcomed Meg Paynor, a PR-gal extraordinare into our little team. In 2008, we started small, raising just $7,500 which we donated to Heifer International. Last year, we set a modest goal of $15,000 with which to build a school in Cambodia (with American Assistance for Cambodia). With the support of a great set of sponsors and a long list of engaged and enthustiastic travel bloggers, we blew past our goal and raised almost $30,000 – allowing us to build a school and fund some facilities at the school. We recently got some photos of The Passport School from AAfC – you can see them here.

This year we’ve set our fund-raising goal at $50,000 and we’re partnering with LAFTI, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Dalit (untouchable) population in India. With $50,000 we will be able to build a village and provide some of these people with homes.

Which brings me back to Lauren and chocolate. I’m not at home right now, I’m in the Argenitian capital of chocolate, Bariloche but you don’t have to go to South America to taste great chocolate, you can do so right in Seattle. In her stores, in Queen Anne and at The Bravern in Bellevue, Lauren stocks artesanal chocolate from all over the world. She is an expert on the subject of chocolate from cacao cultivation to the production of sumptuous morsels with all kinds of interesting and unusual flavors.

That’s why I’m thrilled to announce the prize Lauren has kindly donated to Passports with Purpose 2010: a chocolate tasting event. You may have heard of tasting wines or beers or even whiskeys. Trust me, chocolate tastings are way more fun. as Lauren says on her website: “Similar to a wine tasting, a chocolate tasting gives you and your guests the opportunity to taste and compare chocolate made with cacao from different parts of the world while learning about artisan chocolate and cacao farming and production. Our chocolate tasting parties provide an opportunity to discover the best chocolate the world have to offer!”

Just like in the previous two years, Passports with Purpose 2010 will operate as an online free drawing. This great Chocolopolis prize will be listed on the donation page. For each $10 donation that you make, you get a chance to enter a free drawing for this or any of the other prizes listed. It’s that simple. Go, check out, the prizes, donate $10, $20, $50 or $100 and on December 17th 2010 we’ll announce the winner of each prize.

The Passports with Purpose 2010 sponsors are: BootsnAll, LiveMocha, Round the World with Us, HomeAway, Traveller’s Point, Hostelling International, Quintess, Raveable, TravelPost, and Uptake.

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Thank You For Supporting Passports With Purpose

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Look at the smile on that face. This is the image I’ll be keeping in mind as I process the fact that Passports with Purpose 2009 has been a tremendous success and that because of this effort, some child may one day smile just like this. At a desk, in a school, learning to read and write.

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Final Push For Passports With Purpose

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cambodian-schoolgirl

Photo Friday is usually a fun, easy blog post for me. Sometimes I write about the photos I post, sometimes I just indulgently post cute photos of my boys when they were younger.

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Win a Night at the Fairmont Olympic and Support Passports With Purpose Reach Our Revised Fundraising Goal

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Today was an exciting day. The first email I read this morning was from my friend Debbie telling me that we’d exceeded the Passports with Purpose fundraising goal. We had raised enough money to actually build a school in rural Cambodia.

I remember when Debbie, Pam, Beth and I got together in early November last year to kick-start the original Passports with Purpose effort. At that point, I think we were all cautiously optimistic that we could raise $5,000 for Heifer International. I know we were all thrilled when we passed our modest goal – the actual amount raised in 2008 was $7,400.

I first heard about American Assistance for Cambodia earlier this year, after we’d all commited to Passports with Purpose 2009, and were coming up with suggestions for which charity we should support this year. By raising $13,000 for AAfC we could build a much-needed school in Cambodia. It seemed like a perfect charity for a bunch of travel-bloggers to support. However, given the current economic woes I was a little leery of setting a fund-raising goal of twice what we had raised last year but willing to give it a try.

My reservations were obviously misplaced. With fantastic sponsors, great support from a long list of participating bloggers and great prizes to offer donors, we’ve already raised $13,000 in just under a week. So, we’ve doubled our fundraising goal to $26,000. The additional funds will allow us to support the health and safety of the children who attend this new school by providing clean water, healthy nutrition and on-site medical care.

I’m excited to announce yet another great prize to entice you to support this effort: The Fairmont Olympic Hotel has donated a one night Bed and Breakfast package in Executive Accommodations with valet parking included.

Originally opened in 1924 as The Olympic, this hotel easily evokes a sense of escaping to another time and place. Even as you drive (or walk) into the sweeping forecourt you can’t help but imagine those heady days of Flappers and Charlestons. The interior of the Fairmont Olympic is sumptuous but also warm and welcoming.

santa

This hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as the Pacific Northwest’s only AAA Five Diamond hotel, a designation it has held since 1984, this is a luxury hotel with a history and a story. There are two award-winning restaurants on site. The Georgian offers elegance and grandeur or you can choose to relax in the pub-style environment of Shuckers, the oldest oyster bar in Seattle. Families are very welcome and the children’s menu, on which each menu item has a whimsical fish-themed name, is sure to please even the fussiest child.

shuckers-oyster-selection

Looks good, eh? Each $10 donation you make on the Passports with Purpose website goes directly to support AAfC and gives you a chance to enter a free prize drawing for this and a long list of other great prizes. So do yourself a favor, go check out the full list of prizes and make your $10 or more donation.

I’m also happy to thank our 2009 Sponsors

Got Passport: Will Travel, We’ll Serve

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thanks for supporting Passport With Purpose

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PWP Thank you, thank you, thank you! To all the people who supported this first annual Passports With Purpose. From the people who donated the prizes to the people who wrote about PwP on their blogs to the people who bought the tickets, please accept our sincere thanks. We raised $7,420, far and away exceeding the goal of $5,000 we had set ourselves.

And yes, I did say first annual. Beth, Pam, Debbie and I met last week and we’re committed to running this event in December 2009. We’re setting ourselves a larger fund-raising goal and plan to work through this year to improve our process and the methods we use to communicate with donors, bloggers and supporters. We look forward to your participation later this year!